Areum, Don't You Have a Boyfriend?
The unexpected question made me tilt my head.
"What kind of favor?"
Bam Nuna clasped her hands together and answered.
"Draw something for me!"
"Ah, a drawing. Should I send you some of my practice sketches?"
Thankfully, it wasn't a difficult request. What's the big deal about sending over drawings I was going to make anyway?
But Bam Nuna shook her head as if that wasn't it.
"I'm putting out a comic for SeoCo."
"? Now that you mention it, you did say you were going to do that."
The Seoul Comics Festival, happening around late July.
Our club had decided to do cosplay activities and also make and sell merchandise for popular anime. On top of that, Bam Nuna had decided to produce and sell a personal comic.
And Bam Nuna's favor was exactly this.
"Cheoljjin, please draw my comic for me!"
She was asking me to draw her comic.
"...If I draw it, wouldn't it not be your comic anymore?"
I tilted my head.
"I'll be the story writer, and Cheoljjin will participate as the artist. Doesn't that sound fun?"
She said, and then—
"I've even got a conti! It's on this drive, take a look!"
Bam Nuna showed me her storyboard with full confidence.
But the state of that conti.......
'She's really bad at drawing.'
It was barely a step above stick figures. The kind of drawing you couldn't even praise with empty flattery.
And there was one more thing worth noting.
"...It's an adult comic?"
The quality of the art made it absolutely impossible to look erotic, but regardless, that was the content. The first page had a plot summary, so it was easy to figure out.
A man who lived a miserable life and died due to an administrative error in the underworld. Through various circumstances, he regresses and gains a status window along with the ability to acquire the talents of anyone he has sex with.
It was a textbook male-oriented R-19 harem story.......
I never imagined the comic Bam Nuna was trying to draw would be this kind of content.
Honestly, I was pretty flustered and couldn't fully hide my expression, but Bam Nuna—whether she didn't notice or not—just kept talking with an excited face.
"It's perfect for Kkang-cheol, who's so good at drawing lewd stuff, right? I can write stories. But I can't draw. So!"
"Huh?"
Bam Nuna grabbed my hand tightly. Then she looked at me with earnest eyes and said—
"It would be so great if Cheoljjin would be in charge of the artwork. Please."
"......."
"You'll do it, right?"
"......."
This was a request from the club president, a busty foreign beauty. How many men could easily turn that down?
My answer was.......
*
A room café that had recently opened near Cheongdae Intersection.
The coffee and desserts were just average, but the interior was well-designed and great for taking photos, and the desserts were pretty and fancy, making it a place rapidly gaining popularity among women.
Pi Ah-reum and her friends had reserved a room and were sitting around chatting.
"So the guy confesses. Honestly, it was kind of sudden, but his personality wasn't bad and our hobbies matched, so yeah, we ended up dating."
The dating talk that came up eventually—
"How do you all do it with your boyfriends?"
—flowed into highly personal territory.
"Have you guys ever done it without a condom?"
Everyone's attention focused on that one remark.
Pi Ah-reum and her friends listened intently with fascinated faces.
"No condom, no sex. Of course I know that. But honestly, aren't you curious what it'd feel like raw?"
"S-so, did you actually do it? Without one?"
"Yeah, I did it......."
At their friend's shy admission, the girls squealed.
"Oh my god, are you crazy!"
"You've got some guts!"
"No, listen. The difference between wearing one and not is bigger than you'd think."
"So it's good?"
"Totally! I finally understood why a guy's thing is shaped like a mushroom. The catching sensation with each movement is seriously amazing."
"That good? Hearing you talk, I am kinda curious."
People often call young men embodiments of lust and assume that whenever they get together, they talk about women.
As if only men are interested in the opposite sex. Naturally, when women gather among themselves, they talk about men too.
In fact, women's conversations could sometimes be even more explicit and blunt than men's, especially when it came to sex lives. While men tended not to discuss their partners in detail, it wasn't uncommon for women to share intimate details of their sex lives with their boyfriends among friends.
However, Pi Ah-reum's situation was a little different. She was busy just sucking on her straw to keep herself from blurting anything out.
'I want to share stories too.'
But she couldn't. Why? Because officially, she was a forever-alone who'd never dated a guy. Well, that was actually true in reality as well.
'But I've had tons of sex! Raw, too!'
Pi Ah-reum was definitely a forever-alone who had never once had a boyfriend—but she'd had sex. Even if it was only with one person, she'd had sex in a truly exploratory way.
But she couldn't say that. Because while she and Kang Cheol-jin had been intimate, they weren't actually in a dating relationship.
All Pi Ah-reum could do was—
"Still, we did it without one. Having him finish inside was kind of scary though."
"Right. Going without a condom is one thing, but finishing inside is a little... I mean, if you ended up pregnant, that'd be a disaster."
—listen to her friends' stories.
'You can just take birth control pills for that. And taking the pill makes it easier to regulate your cycle anyway.'
Just like this, internally.
"And the feeling of him finishing inside seems kind of meh anyway. I heard it doesn't come out well if he does it inside?"
"Yeah, they say it leaks out like discharge."
'It is admittedly a bit inconvenient. Still, the feeling when he comes inside is nice though.'
All she could do was hold a silent Q&A with herself.
Then one friend spoke up with a complicated expression.
"You guys are all amazing. I'm jealous."
"Of what?"
"That sex can be that good. I dunno, I just don't really get it. I do it because my boyfriend likes it, but I don't really feel like going out of my way for it."
She had never experienced what people call the climax. Orgasm? What even is that? There was definitely a ticklish sensation, but it wasn't something worth investing that much time in.
Surprisingly, most of her friends agreed with that opinion.
"Ah, I think I get what you mean. It's nice for me too, but it's more like it's nice because I feel loved by my boyfriend, rather than the sex itself being good?"
"There's definitely a sense of fulfillment, but... there are plenty of times I don't want to because I'm too tired."
Most of the girls nodded as if they agreed. Even the friend who said going raw felt good felt the same way.
"It's good for me, but... honestly, it's not like I'm dying to have it. The reason I tried it raw was because I wondered if it'd feel a little better without the rubber."
Her friends' reactions were fairly shocking to Pi Ah-reum.
'Sex itself isn't that great?'
Pi Ah-reum thought back to her times with Kang Cheol-jin.
'...It was totally amazing though?'
It was to the point where she wondered how it could possibly not be good. How could anyone dislike that shivery, aching, desperate sensation? Sure, the first insertion hurt and was tough, but from the second time on, she'd felt an addictive pleasure.
'Is her boyfriend on the small side?'
She couldn't help but think that. Or maybe he was just bad at sex.
In contrast, Kang Cheol-jin was really good at sex. He was thorough with foreplay and picked up on what spots she liked even without her saying anything. More than anything, that bottomless stamina of his was really.......
'Ah, now I want to have sex.'
Come to think of it, she hadn't really had sex with Kang Cheol-jin much since the Hongdae trip. That was because she'd been busy having a showdown with her parents for a certain reason.
In other words, Pi Ah-reum was a little sexually frustrated. Maybe because of that, just recalling the memories made heat creep up through her body. Once ignited, the heat didn't easily subside, and now the space between her legs was starting to itch.
'I should've just hung out with Kkang-cheol.......'
She hadn't been able to turn down her friends' invitation because she had to pay attention to department social life too. It was an unavoidable necessity. If she kept only hanging out with Kang Cheol-jin and the other club members, at some point she'd end up unable to fit in with the department crowd.
It was while Pi Ah-reum, her lust ignited, couldn't sit still—
"Oh my god, look at Areum's face. It's gotten so red."
"?!"
Pi Ah-reum flinched in surprise, but naturally, no one realized she was in a state of arousal.
They just looked at her and laughed, finding her cute.
"Look at her getting all embarrassed. Was it too stimulating for you, Areum?"
"Stimulating...?"
Pi Ah-reum's head tilted to the side. Regardless, her friends just giggled at her.
"Ahaha. So cute!"
"Areum, you said you went to all-girls' middle and high schools, right?"
"Y-yeah. That's right."
Pi Ah-reum nodded slightly, but she was a bit puzzled.
'Stimulating? Why do I have this kind of image?'
Because she was short and small-framed, being seen as cute was familiar to her. But since she had such an uninhibited personality and frequently made sex jokes, she'd never been treated as innocent before.
'Now that I think about it.......'
It seemed like she hadn't really made sex jokes since coming to college. The reason was obvious. Because she'd been releasing all her sexual desires onto Kang Cheol-jin.
"Areum, you're not dating anyone?"
"Yeah, you're pretty popular."
"I saw Areum getting confessed to at school the other day. Twice, even."
"Whoa, seriously? Areum, you already got confessed to twice?"
Pi Ah-reum awkwardly smiled and mumbled her answer. There was no benefit to flaunting your own popularity. Moreover, the number of confessions she'd received was far from just two.
'Five times? Or was it six?'
Honestly, she'd been confessed to so many times it was confusing to keep count. She'd received even more confession-like approaches. Not just from classmates—she'd suddenly get personal messages from upperclassmen or students from other departments in the same lectures.
Of course, she'd politely turned down most of them. The persistent ones got blocked. At least lately, the number of people showing interest had decreased. Thanks to Kang Cheol-jin, whose reputation had started changing recently. Since he was always stuck to her side, people probably assumed she had a boyfriend.
Just then, her friends mentioned Kang Cheol-jin.
"Come on, Areum has Cheol-jin."
"Didn't you say you two aren't dating?"
"Since the topic came up, let's talk about it. Are you really not dating Cheol-jin? I'm in the same department, so I honestly thought you were just brushing it off and having a secret relationship."
Pi Ah-reum waved her hand lightly and answered.
"No, we're really not dating. We're just super close friends."
She knew that Kang Cheol-jin had trauma. She'd even personally confirmed the burn scar on his neck, so she was deliberately avoiding putting any pressure on him.
Even with Pi Ah-reum's answer, her friends continued talking about Kang Cheol-jin.
"Hey guys, hasn't Cheol-jin been losing weight and getting more handsome lately?"
"Ah, you noticed too? I didn't see it before, but lately it's no joke, right? He's chubby but you can see the handsome underneath."
"For real. If he loses a bit more weight, he might give off mid-tier actor vibes?"
"That's what I'm saying. I used to not get why people called Cheol-jin handsome, but lately it's just blatantly obvious."
Then suddenly, the questions turned back to Pi Ah-reum.
"Areum, can I ask you something?"
"...What?"
"I get that you're not dating, but do you have zero interest in Cheol-jin either? I mean, back then maybe not, but things could've changed by now, right?"
"Yeah yeah. When you're always together, feelings can develop. And Cheol-jin has changed so much."
"Umm......."
Pi Ah-reum's brow furrowed with an ambiguous expression.